Jonathan Ogilvie

Jonathan Ogilvie began writing and performing in post-punk bands as a Christchurch teenager. His immersion in the local indie music scene later led to him making a number of moody music videos for the Flying Nun label — for bands such as The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience (Into You), The Bats (the London-shot Made Up in Blue) and Headless Chickens (Cruise Control).

Ogilvie's 1987 clip for Straitjacket Fits classic 'She Speeds' has many fans; featuring the band on the back of a truck speeding through the Lyttelton tunnel, the video is said to have cost only $250.

Following a Bachelor of Arts at Canterbury University, Ogilvie spent time in New York and London, where he worked in the special effects department on Kubrick war movie Full Metal Jacket. Stories of him setting fire to actor Matthew Modine's eyebrows have been exaggerated — a fellow crew member waved a gas flame bar in front of a smoke machine that Ogilvie was operating.

Ogilvie graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in the early 1990s. It proved a busy period. Ogilvie was directing and shooting videos on both sides of the Tasman, including vids for Oz rockers Clouds and the Hoodoo Gurus, and commercials for Hot Tuna surfware. There was also a short film, child's tale My First Brush with the Law, and back-to-back NZ Music Award nominations for two of his Headless Chickens videos: Mr Moon and a hit remix of 'Cruise Control'.

Inspired by a photograph, Ogilvie's 1995 short film Despondent Divorcee screened at more than a dozen festivals, including Toronto and Clermont-Ferrand. It also won official selection at Cannes. While at the festival, Ogilvie shot some super 8 footage, and the film that resulted would repeat his Cannes selection feat the following year. The comical This Film is a Dog managed to get in 14 festivals, including winning first prize from the many contenders at Australia's Tropfest.

Ogilvie has continued to work in a variety of formats, from 50-minute digital short Jetset (set in an airport departure lounge), to 35mm short Trunk, to making his feature directing debut shooting on 8mm (a medium rarely used for feature films, even in the days when film was still king). Emulsion (2006) combined noirish elements with a satiric edge, to tell the tale of an egotistical actor haunted by sightings of the prostitute he accidentally wronged.

Sophomore feature The Tender Hook (2008) was nominated for five Australian Film Institute Awards, plus another from the Australian Writers Guild for Ogilvie's screenplay. Set in 1920s Sydney, the "haunting, almost surreal" (said critic Andrew Urban) tale stars Hugo Weaving and Rose Byrne as gangster lovers. Aussie camera legend Geoffrey Simpson (The Navigator) was cinematographer.

Both Simpson and Weaving were back on board for Ogilvie's third feature Lone Wolf, which was nominated for Best Indie Film at the 2021 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards. The political thriller updates Joseph Conrad novel The Secret Agent to a world in which technology is used for all kinds of covert surveillance. Weaving plays a dodgy politician.

In 2024 Ogilvie's fourth feature Head South — his first set in New Zealand — was chosen to open the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. The coming of age tale circles back to the Christchurch post-punk scene of the late 1970s. Says Ogilvie: "It’s a return to the world of music and ideas — and indeed the place, Ōtautahi Christchurch — that first inspired me to become a screenwriter and director."

Ogilvie is a longtime teacher of directing at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. He has also worked as a reader, assessor and development executive at the New South Wales Film and Television Office.

Profile updated on 25 January 2024

Sources include
Jonathan Ogilvie
'Jonathan Ogilvie - Directing Lecturer' (Profile). AFTRS website. Accessed 25 January 2024
Hussain Currimbhoy, 'Noir by Day: Interview with Jonathan Ogilvie on Emulsion' Senses of Cinema website. Loaded February 2007. Accessed 25 January 2024
Andrew L Urban, 'Tender Hook, The' (broken link). Urban Cinefile website. Accessed 14 March 2010
Unknown writer, 'New Zealand Feature Film Head South to World Premiere at Rotterdam International  Film Festival Opening Night' (Media Release) NZ Film Commission website. Loaded 22 November 2023. Accessed 25 January 2024